Record $428M Capital Surge Powers AI-First Commerce Revolution: Seven Startups Reshaping Retail Operations

Key Takeaways

1. FERMÀT secures $45M Series B from VMG Partners, positioning its AI-native Commerce Brain as the infrastructure layer for next-generation agentic shopping experiences. The platform now serves enterprise brands preparing for an era where AI agents autonomously make purchase decisions on behalf of customers.
2. Whatnot’s $225M Series F round at $11.5B valuation (co-led by DST Global and CapitalG) represents the market’s validation of live commerce as a proven engagement channel, with the platform processing over $6 billion in gross merchandise value in 2025 alone—doubling its 2024 performance.
3. Numeral’s two-stage funding blitz—$18M Series A from Benchmark followed by $35M Series B from Mayfield—totaling $53M in six months, signals investor conviction that AI-powered sales tax compliance is a high-margin, mission-critical enterprise software opportunity. The platform has already processed $5 billion in transaction volume with 3.5x YoY revenue growth.
4. WithCoverage’s unannounced Series A and $42M Series B led by Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures (January 2026) introduces a new category: AI-enabled risk and insurance infrastructure for fast-growing companies, disrupting traditional commission-based brokerage models and proving that regulatory, operational platforms attract elite-tier venture backing.
5. Lyric’s $43.5M Series B from Insight Partners (total funding: $67M) establishes AI-native supply chain decision intelligence as a venture-scale market, addressing brands’ critical need to optimize multi-step, multi-supplier logistics networks in real time.
6. Confido’s $20M Series A from Footwork validates the market opportunity in AI-powered financial operations software for CPG brands, automating the complex accounting and compliance workflows that traditionally require large back-office teams.
7. SPINS’s acquisition of MikMak represents the consolidation phase of commerce intelligence, combining the industry’s richest CPG dataset with omnichannel orchestration capabilities to serve 4,000+ brands across physical, e-commerce, and social channels. This M&A signals that data aggregation and unified measurement platforms are now table stakes in enterprise retail.

Quick Recap

Seven AI-powered companies serving consumer brands and retailers announced major funding rounds or strategic acquisitions between June 2025 and January 2026, collectively raising over $428 million and signaling a decisive market recovery for venture capital in the e-commerce and retail operations space. After a prolonged difficult period marked by capital scarcity and market consolidation, elite-tier venture firms—including Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, VMG Partners, DST Global, CapitalG, Mayfield, Benchmark, and Insight Partners—have converged on seven distinct startups solving specific, measurable problems across commerce personalization, sales tax automation, supply chain optimization, financial operations, risk management, and competitive market data.

The Commerce AI Boom: Details on Major Funding Rounds

The funding surge reflects a fundamental shift in how brands approach digital commerce and operations. Whatnot’s $225 million Series F round, co-led by DST Global and CapitalG in October 2025, valued the live shopping platform at $11.5 billion—more than double its valuation at the start of the year. This capital injection follows the company’s explosive growth: Whatnot generated over $6 billion in gross merchandise value in 2025 alone, compared to just $3 billion in all of 2024. The company’s ability to attract fresh capital at a dramatically higher valuation in the midst of a challenging e-commerce environment validates the live commerce thesis and positions Whatnot as the category leader in interactive, real-time shopping experiences.

FERMÀT, an AI-native commerce platform founded by former LiveRamp product and engineering leaders Rishabh Jain and Shreyas Kumar, raised $45 million in Series B funding led by VMG Partners in June 2025. The platform helps brands create fully personalized e-commerce experiences tailored to both human shoppers and AI agents. FERMÀT’s proprietary “Commerce Brain” (a real-time shopper behavior graph) and AI-driven features like Pierre Data Explorer and Funnel Visualizer position the company at the forefront of agentic commerce—the emerging paradigm where autonomous AI agents research, compare, and complete purchases without human mediation. Unlike Whatnot’s consumer-facing model, FERMÀT operates as B2B infrastructure, enabling brands and agencies to orchestrate experiences across channels and buyer types.

The enterprise AI wave extended beyond pure commerce platforms into mission-critical operational infrastructure. Numeral, an AI-powered sales tax compliance platform, executed an uncommon funding strategy: securing $18 million in Series A funding led by Benchmark, then immediately following with a $35 million Series B led by Mayfield in September 2025, bringing the company’s total funding to $57 million. This two-stage capital blitz in rapid succession reflects investor confidence that Numeral has achieved product-market fit and predictable revenue growth. The platform has processed over $5 billion in transaction volume and achieved 3.5x year-over-year revenue growth by automating one of the most operationally intensive tasks in e-commerce: multi-jurisdictional sales tax filing and compliance.

Supply chain-focused AI also caught investor attention. Lyric, an AI-native supply chain decision intelligence platform, raised $43.5 million in Series B funding led by Insight Partners in August 2025, bringing its total funding to $67 million. Lyric’s technology helps brands and logistics operators optimize procurement, inventory allocation, and supplier selection using machine learning models trained on historical supply chain data. As retail becomes increasingly omnichannel and SKU proliferation accelerates, supply chain optimization has emerged as one of the highest-leverage opportunities for AI-driven cost reduction.

Financial operations for brands also attracted capital. Confido, which provides AI-powered financial operations software for consumer packaged goods brands, secured $20 million in Series A funding led by Footwork (with seed backing from Watchfire Ventures). Confido automates reconciliation, forecasting, and compliance workflows that traditionally required large back-office teams, helping CPG brands scale their financial operations without proportional headcount growth.

Perhaps most notably, WithCoverage joined the funding wave in January 2026, raising $42 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures. Founded by JD Ross (former co-founder of Opendoor) and Max Brenner, WithCoverage uses AI to help fast-growing companies manage risk and insurance through a transparent, tech-enabled approach that breaks the traditional commission-based brokerage model. The fact that two of the world’s most selective venture firms backed this round signals that risk management and insurance infrastructure is now considered a foundational layer for the next generation of commerce platforms.​

Finally, CPG data and analytics firm SPINS completed the acquisition of MikMak, a global leader in commerce intelligence and omnichannel orchestration, in January 2026. MikMak had previously raised $14 million but was acquired as SPINS sought to combine the industry’s richest CPG dataset with advanced media and measurement capabilities. The combined entity now serves over 4,000 brands and directly addresses the industry’s shift toward unified measurement across physical retail, e-commerce, social commerce, and future agentic channels.​

The Agentic Commerce Inflection Point

These funding rounds signal a critical market inflection. After a difficult 2023-2024 for venture capital in retail and e-commerce marked by layoffs, regulatory uncertainty, and market consolidation but, 2025 emerged as a turning point. Several factors converged to drive investor confidence:

1. The Rise of Agentic Commerce

The near-term emergence of autonomous AI agents that can research, compare, and complete purchases without human intervention is forcing brands and their technology partners to reimagine the entire shopping experience. Companies like FERMÀT explicitly market their platforms as “agentic commerce” ready, positioning themselves at the forefront of this transformation. This inflection point is not theoretical; major AI labs have already released shopping agents in beta, and brands need infrastructure to support their deployment.

2. Live Commerce Proving Its Profitability

Whatnot’s explosive growth—generating $6 billion in GMV in a single year—validates the live shopping model in the Western market. This success is drawing capital to competing platforms and adjacent tools that enable high-engagement commerce experiences. Equally important, Whatnot achieved this at significant scale, with over 4 million active buyers, proving that live commerce is not a niche phenomenon but a category shift.

3. Enterprise AI Adoption Accelerating Across Operations

Beyond pure commerce, enterprise AI adoption is accelerating across retail operations. Tax compliance (Numeral), supply chain optimization (Lyric), financial operations (Confido), and risk management (WithCoverage) all represent mission-critical use cases where AI can demonstrably reduce costs or unlock revenue. These platforms are not consumer-facing toys; they address real operational pain points with measurable ROI. Enterprise software investors have observed that AI-powered automation in these domains can reduce operational costs by 20-40%, making ROI calculations straightforward.

4. Data Consolidation and Unified Measurement Becoming Critical

The acquisition of MikMak by SPINS reflects a broader consolidation trend in retail data and commerce intelligence. Brands increasingly demand unified views of customer behavior across physical stores, e-commerce, social, and future agentic channels. Traditional point-solution vendors are struggling to provide this visibility, creating a window of opportunity for platforms that can aggregate data across all touchpoints and provide real-time, actionable insights.

Competitive Landscape & Comparison: Key Players in AI-Powered Retail

Whatnot dominates in absolute capital and valuation, reflecting the venture market’s appetite for proven, consumer-scale engagement models. FERMÀT, however, is winning on forward positioning—its explicit focus on agentic commerce and proprietary shopper behavior graph position it as the infrastructure layer for next-generation personalization. Numeral’s rapid successive funding rounds (Series A then Series B in six months) signal that enterprise AI for compliance has achieved Product-Market Fit and predictable scaling. Lyric’s backing from supply chain-specialized investors suggests that AI-driven logistics optimization is emerging as a distinct venture category, separate from general e-commerce infrastructure.

Sci-Tech Today’s Takeaway

I think this capital wave is a signal that the venture market has finally crossed a threshold with AI in retail and commerce. For the past 18 months, we’ve seen investors burned by hype and overfunding in consumer-facing retail startups. The failures of Jet.com, Qubit, and countless others have made VCs cautious. But what’s happening now is different. These companies—Whatnot, FERMÀT, Numeral, Lyric, WithCoverage, Confido, and now the SPINS-MikMak combination—are solving specific, measurable problems: increasing customer lifetime value through personalization, automating tedious compliance work, optimizing supply chains, managing risk transparently, and providing unified measurement across channels. These aren’t spectulative bets on consumer behavior. They’re infrastructure plays.

In my experience covering the venture space, I’ve noticed a pattern: when elite-tier VCs like Sequoia, Khosla, DST Global, and CapitalG converge around a trend in rapid succession, it typically signals an inflection point has already arrived. The fact that all seven of these companies received funding in just eight months, and that they represent different verticals (commerce, logistics, tax, finance, insurance, data), suggests that brands and retailers have collectively concluded that AI-powered operations are no longer optional. It’s table stakes.

The one reservation I have is whether the broader e-commerce market can absorb all this innovation quickly enough. Crunchbase research showed that overall e-commerce funding is still down year-over-year, even as specific AI verticals are seeing investment spikes. That suggests capital is concentrating in proven niches and proven teams—which is actually healthy. It means we’re past the “spray and pray” phase of venture funding in retail.What I generally prefer to see in this space is focused, measurable platforms that solve clear operational problems, which is exactly what FERMÀT’s commerce graph, Numeral’s tax automation, Lyric’s supply chain optimization, and WithCoverage’s risk management represent. I’m bullish on 2026 for AI-powered commerce and operations, but with a caveat: the winners won’t be the companies with the flashiest marketing or the most ambitious consumer narratives. They’ll be the platforms that brands can integrate seamlessly into existing workflows and prove ROI within 90 days. Based on this funding round data and the pedigree of investors backing these companies, it looks like the market has learned this lesson and is allocating capital accordingly. The age of AI-native commerce infrastructure has officially begun.